Why And How ‘Community’ Ended Up At Yahoo, And Where It Goes From Here

We’ve all had about a week to try to wrap our heads around the fact that Communitywas saved and brought back for a sixth season by Yahoo, of all places. Some of you have probably come to terms with it by now. Many of you haven’t, I imagine. I mean, Yahoo. I didn’t even know that was an option. It’s kind of like if your favorite restaurant was closed and you were frantically looking for another place to eat dinner, and out of nowhere a guy from Dick’s Sporting Goods flagged you down in the parking lot and said “Hey, so, we have a barbecue pit now. Not a huge one. Just something we’re trying to get into. So, if you’re hungry…”

What I’m saying is that I’m sure you have some questions about all of this. Luckily, TV Guide put together a nice little explainer of how everything went down and what to expect going forward, the highlights of which I will summarize here:

Community was really, really close to getting canceled. Some of the crew and writers had already moved on to other projects, and the show’s offices had already been taken over by a new series for Netflix. The deal with Yahoo “moved at a rocket pace” during “a weekend of frenzied dealmaking” after Hulu passed, with everything getting finalized just hours before the deadline.

The sticking point with Hulu was the money, which wasn’t a issue for Yahoo. The entire next season is budgeted for the same $2 million per episode it was at NBC.

The main cast is back, at least for a solid chunk of the season, but John Oliver and Jonathan Banks have new gigs that are keeping them busy.

The episodes will be released weekly, once Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna and crew can turn them around (they start writing next month), and will be available for free via the Yahoo Screen app, which is apparently a thing you will need to get familiar with.

Not Community-related, but according the the TV Guide story there was actually a deal in place with USA way back when to save Happy Endings “until a last-minute snag pulled the plug.” And now I’m livid all over again.

There’s plenty more in the story if you want to go check it out. This is all so weird. A search engine is making a TV show. Better this than The Ask Jeeves Variety Hour, I guess.

Yea, this is what it will hinge on. Losing Troy and Pierce was acceptable as Jonathan Banks and John Oliver were solid replacements that fit in nicely with the plot of the 5th season, but you can’t keep pulling rabbits out of a hat to replace lost characters.

FUCKING LAST MINUTE SNAGS! Anyway, that budget info is pretty cool. I assumed it was gonna be cut significantly. And don’t be too weirded-out about a search engine making a TV show. They already did Burning Love. Plus, remember Google owns YouTube.

I too was trying to figure that out, and I assumed it was some kind of pay service, but I think it’s just this: [screen.yahoo.com]

Fun fact, they bought the rights to all the old SNL clips which is why Hulu only has this most recent season now. It’s been a PITA to search for SNL clips though, unless I’m just a moron who enters stupid search terms. And a couple of the clips I’ve watched are choppy and have quality issues. I imagine that won’t be an issue for an original series that they’re “airing” though.

Ever since Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo, they’ve been gaining more and more relevance. Since she came on board, they’ve continually made great acquisitions, of everything from gaming studios to social networks (Tumblr, among several smaller ones) to fantasy sports companies to on demand video and music services.